An insidious Haptic invasion

Abstract

This paper describes preliminary work in a project to add force feedback to user interface elements of the X Window System in an attempt to add true "feel" to the window system's "look and feel". Additions include adding ridges around icons and menu items to aid interaction, alignment guides for moving windows, and other enhancements to window manipulation. The motivation for this system is the observation that people naturally have many skills for and intuitions about a very rich environment of interaction forces in the non-computer world; however, these skills are largely unused in computer applications. We expect that haptic modifications to conventional graphical user interfaces, such as those we present, can lead to gains in performance, intuition, learnability, and enjoyment of the interface. This paper describes details of the implementation of the haptic window system elements, in addition to higher-level haptic design principles and informal observations of users of the system.